Paul Guzzo
Tampa Bay Times
Before Mel Tillis achieved stardom, writing songs recorded by hundreds of Nashville artists and embracing the stutter that became his trademark, he was a young man fresh out of the Air Force struggling to land a spot in a Plant City talent show.
Eyes rolled when he took the stage to audition for Al Berry, Ercelle Smith and their radio station, WPLA.
“He introduced himself with that stutter and I thought, ‘This should be good,’” Berry recalls. “Then he started singing and my jaw dropped.”
The audience was impressed, too, Berry said, including one man with ties to Nashville who turned Tillis’ thoughts toward the country music capital. It wasn’t long afterward that the Tampa native packed up and headed there for a career that would span more than 60 albums, more than 30 top 10 country singles and appearances in a number of feature comedy films.
Mr. Tillis died early Sunday at Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala after a battle with intestinal problems, a spokesman said. He was 85.
Lonnie Melvin Tillis was born to Lonnie Lee and Burma Tillis at Tampa General Hospital on Aug. 8, 1932.
After a few months living in Tampa’s Lowry Park area, they moved to Plant City where Mr. Tillis attended Wilson Elementary School. For the most part, though, he was raised in Pahokee, the hardscrabble sugar cane and farming community on the shores of Lake Okeechobee where he developed his musical talents.
A childhood bout with malaria left him with the stutter, recalled his cousin Carroll Williamson of Dover.
“It was bad when he was a kid,” Williamson said. “He could hardly say his name, but he overcame it.”
He had some help from the late Plant City folk artist Bill Miller, who also owned Miller Candy Company and interviewed Tillis for a job there. Miller didn’t hire him but he did share his own story of overcoming a stutter and gave Mr. Tillis a piece of paper to read 10 times each night before going to bed.
“It changed my life,” the singer would say in an interview later.
On the paper was written a variation of the Serenity Prayer: “Lord grant me the courage to change the things I can change, the serenity to accept those I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. And God, grant me the courage to not give up on what I think is right, even though I think it is hopeless.”
In the time before he moved from Plant City to Nashville, Mr. Tillis worked a number of odd jobs, as a truck driver, a strawberry picker, a firefighter, on the railroad and as a milkman — all of which inspired his breakthrough song, I’m Tired, a hit in the early 1960s for honky-tonk recording artist Webb Pierce.
Members of the extended Tillis family still live in the Plant City area. His daughter, country music star Pam Tillis, was born in a hospital that once operated in downtown Plant City and has returned to appear at the city’s signature Strawberry Festival.
Though he soon became a national treasure, residents of Plant City always regarded him as one of their own. When Berry recounts Tillis’ impact on the town he dives into tales of him working tirelessly painting local businesses at night and picking strawberries. His infectious sense of humor weaving through every story.
“He was a sweetheart,” Berry said. “He’d still call me up just to chat and I tell you what, if my wife answered the phone he could talk to her without stuttering one time. But the second I got on the phone it came back full force. It was as much a part of him as his talent. That boy could write a song in five minutes.”
Mel Tillis wrote hits for Kenny Rogers, Ricky Skaggs and many others.
In all, the Country Music Hall of Fame member penned more than 1,000 songs and in 2012 received a National Medal of Arts for bringing “his unique blend of warmth and humor to the great tradition of country music.”
His own hit country singles included Good Woman Blues, Coca-Cola Cowboy and Southern Rain. Among the hits he wrote for others were Detroit City for Bobby Bare; Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town for Rogers and the First Edition; and Thoughts of a Fool for George Strait.
Mr. Tillis also dabbled in acting, appearing in such feature films as Clint Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose, and the Burt Reynolds movies Cannonball Run I and II and Smokey and the Bandit II.
Berry said that no matter how famous he became, he always stayed true to himself.
“He wouldn’t dress in jeans (while performing), he never would,” Berry said. “He was a class act from Plant City. He was an experience and I enjoyed every minute of it.”
He said that his partner, Smith, once gave Tillis a walking cane. Years later, the trio was walking around his property in Ocala and Tillis was still using that very cane.
“He was full of talent, but he never forgot us,” Berry said, “And we never forgot him.”
Mr. Tillis became a major success on his own in the late 1960s and toured for decades, often using the stutter as a source of humor — though it disappeared when he sang.
“One of the reasons I worked it into my show is that it’s my trademark,” he once told the Associated Press.
He said that when he was in the Air Force as a flight leader, he marched airmen right into a wall.
“I couldn’t get out the word ‘halt,’” he said.
Williamson, his cousin, said Mr. Tillis worked to help others who stuttered.
“He would go to schools and give talks about his speech impediment and how he overcame it and that it was possible and not to be embarrassed,” she said.
He will be remembered by those who knew him in Florida as someone who never forgot his roots, checking in with them from time to time.
One of the jobs he worked as a teenager was with Carroll and Jerry Redish, who owned an electrical contracting company in Clewiston. He learned they were in the audience at one of his concerts, recalled their grandson, Tampa public relations executive Bill Carlson, and invited them backstage.
“I think that says a lot about who he was,” Carlson said.
Added Berry, the former radio man, “He was one of us.”
“He’d been hunting once and I asked how he did. He said the only thing we killed was two-fifths of whiskey. He was a funny guy.”
Mr. Tillis also joked about that fateful Plant City talent show. He placed second, collected the $50 prize — and used it to pay for a speeding ticket he had received driving there.
He was late.
Breanne Williams contributed to this report.